Cynthia Kenyon

“Maybe one day we will be able to take a pill that keeps us young and healthy much longer. I believe in my heart that this will happen.”

“I eat some fruit every day, but not too much and almost no processed food. I stay away from sweets, except 80 per cent chocolate.”

“With science it's very important not to go down the wrong path, but the wrong path in science is a path you go down where everything you learn is already known. So you need to steer around the obvious.”

“Imagine that: If you could change one of the genes in an experiment, an aging gene, maybe you could slow down aging and extend lifespan.”

“You would think that UV just causes mutations, but it doesn't; you need a gene to be active for it.”

“I loved the idea that biology was logical.”

“A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics.”

“Humans live a lot longer than dogs, and we don't suffer any penalty that I can see. We're superior in almost every way - they can smell better. But really, they can't drive cars, they can't do half the things we can. I don't understand why you can't live longer and be really fit.”

“We are trying to find drugs, small molecules, that people could take to make them disease-resistant, more youthful and healthy. Eventually we will find them.”

“It's like, say, if you were a dog. You notice that you're getting old, and you look at your human and you think, 'Why isn't this human getting old?'... But now we're the human looking out and imagining a different human.”

“It is unlikely that changes in telomeres are influencing the lifespan of the worm. That is because telomeres only shorten when cells divide. Most of the cells of the worm stop dividing when the worm becomes an adult.”

“I was one of those kids who was always seeking the truth, and I first looked for truth by reading novels. It took quite a long time for me to realize there are better ways.”

“You could have two completely different careers if you could stay healthy to 90. How fascinating that would be.”

“There are lots of different strategies that an animal can use to survive. What a worm does is try to convert food into worms as soon as possible. In three days a single worm produces 300 progeny. So why put your resources into developing if you can make a brand-new worm in no time at all?”

“I was a little truth seeker as a child. I wanted more than anything to understand myself and also other people.”

“Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I've been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I've cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta.”

“The hope is that if we can increase youthfulness, we can postpone age-related diseases.”

“Just living longer and being sick is the worst. But the idea that you could have fewer diseases, and just have a healthy life and then turn out the lights, that's a good vision to have. And I think what we know about some of these pathways suggests that might be possible.”

“With worms you can just change genes at random and see if you can find a mutant that does what you want it to do.”

“The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected.”